Siddharth Kumar

We spend far too much time justifying ourselves, our personality traits, our ambitions, the kind of people we claim to be, and the ways our past has shaped us. Every choice demands an explanation, and every change requires a rationale. Slowly, we begin to narrate our lives as if they must make perfect sense, as if coherence is proof of growth. In the process, we try to fit the world and the people in it into neatly constructed frameworks that we assume our lives must follow.

We become architects of rigid meanings. We decide what aligns with us and what does not, what serves us and what must be discarded. Things we once held dear, relationships, dreams, habits, even versions of ourselves, are let go. Not always because they lost their value, but because they no longer fit the story we are telling ourselves about who we should be. We call it maturity, clarity, or self-respect, rarely pausing to ask whether it is also fear in disguise.

Gradually, we reduce ourselves to definitions. This is my boundary. This is my goal. This is my truth. We measure life through self-imposed parameters and private yardsticks, mistaking control for understanding. Ambiguity begins to feel threatening. Contradictions feel like flaws. We forget that we are not meant to be consistent, efficient, or fully explainable.

But what is all this in service of, and at what cost? In our attempt to protect ourselves, do we shrink the very space where life is meant to unfold? Do we lose the peculiar, the irrational, the unexpected moments that cannot be justified but often mean the most? Do we trade wonder for certainty and curiosity for comfort?

Perhaps not everything needs to fit. Not every desire needs a long-term vision, and not every attachment needs to be defended or abandoned with logic.

Maybe self-growth is not about refining life into a perfect structure, but about learning when to loosen our grip on it, about allowing ourselves to be surprised, even unsettled. About accepting that meaning can emerge from chaos, and authenticity can exist without explanation.

And the real question is not who we are trying to become, but what parts of life we are quietly refusing to experience because they do not fit the shape we have decided our life should take.

In the end, we keep telling ourselves a futile story, one for which the only audience is our fearful selves.